What Makes You Think The World’s Ever Been Saved?

Posted by
Niall Harrison

17 January 2012

Brit Mandelo continues her re-read of the works of Joanna Russ with a twopart examination of her 1984 collection Extra(ordinary) People:

Discussions of performativity often run the risk of sounding dismissive of the gender/sexuality paradigms that are being discussed as performances, if the discussion isn’t careful to qualify that just because they’re performed and not innate doesn’t make them any less real or valuable. “Everyday Depressions” is that clarification about the value of living, if you have the time to do it, and of self in the world at large. It’s also about stories, and the way that stories structure our ideas of identity and performance—which is, really, sort of what Extra(ordinary) People is all about as a whole. It’s a subtle book in many ways, but a profound one in all; as with complex novels like The Two of Them, talking about it can become a confusing mire of analysis and adoration without a clear way to tie things off and escape..

Out of print, of course. Fingers crossed for that Collected Stories. See also Teresa Nielsen Hayden's comment on the genesis and meaning of “What Did You Do During the Revolution, Grandma?”

A quick update: as it says in the title of this post, comments on our reviews and on this blog have been disabled. Unfortunately, the Movable Type installation we use for those areas of the site is being overwhelmed by...

A day late with this installment, for which apologies; I've been on the road for the last week, and my final stop unexpectedly involved a lack of internet. Still, better late than never, here's the round-up of contributor news from...

Last Monday, we posted a review of Long Hidden, a new anthology edited by Daniel José Older and Rose Fox; a number of commenters were disappointed and/or hurt by the way the review approached its subject, in particular its critique...

As usual, we start this round-up of SH contributor news with some new books: Emily Jiang's Summoning the Phoenix ("Poems and prose about Chinese musical instruments", illustrated by April Chu), is out from Shen's Books (and got a starred review...

This year's Hugo ballot is out! Many congratulations to Sofia Samatar, whose SH story "Selkie Stories are for Losers" (audio) is a nominee in the Short Story category, and who is herself a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award...